1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information processing device and an information processing method for carrying out processing based on an input operation by a user using an input device for carrying out rotation and press operations, a program based on the information processing method, and a recording medium having the program recorded thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in order to improve the user-friendliness of a portable information processing device and the user-friendliness of application software, for example, a device having a rotation/press-type operating unit called jog dial provided on a lateral side of the body is commercially available from the present Applicant. The jog dial is provided on one of the left and right lateral sides of the body. The jog dial is rotatable forward and backward around an axial line set in the up-and-down direction and is displaceable by pressing.
One usage of this jog dial is, for example, to select one of a plurality of application software programs displayed on a display screen by a scroll method using forward and backward rotations of the jog dial, and press the jog dial in the state where an application is selected, thus causing execution of the selected application. The mechanical changes resulting from the operation of such a jog dial basically includes three-dimensional elements, that is, rotations in the two directions and displacement by pressing. In addition, the quantity of rotation in each direction, and the rotation speed in each direction of rotation calculated from the quantity of rotation can be provided. Therefore, by associating the changes accompanying the operation of the jog dial with specific functions of the information processing device, or by associating these changes with various functions in application software, the user-friendliness is significantly improved.
For example, in association with the input operation using the jog dial, a graphical user interface including a guide status and a list view status, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, is displayed on the display screen of the information processing device.
The status transition between the guide status and the list view status must be prepared on the application side by using a jog dial application interface.
An application tuned by using the jog dial application interface is referred to as jog dial-compatible application, which is discriminated from an untuned application referred to as jog dial-incompatible application.
In the case of a jog dial-incompatible application, the control which is generally considered to be held by all applications as shown in FIG. 3 is emulated from outside and the predominance proper to the jog dial is not utilized sufficiently.
Specifically, as shown in FIG. 3, in the jog dial-incompatible application of the initial state S, a list view status L is displayed. If “scroll” is selected in this list view status L, the status shift to a guide status G related to scroll. If “status back” is selected in the guide status G related to scroll, the status shifts back to the list view status L. On the other hand, if “menu” is selected in the list view status L, the status shifts to a guide status related to menu selection. If “select/back” is selected in the guide status G related to menu selection, the information processing device is caused to execute a selected menu item. If “select/back” is pressed longer, the status shifts back to the list view status L.